


harry's favourite colour

by quibbler



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-10
Updated: 2014-08-10
Packaged: 2018-02-12 14:23:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2113242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quibbler/pseuds/quibbler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry's favourite color was red. He decided this when he was three and saw a pot of poinsettias in someone's window.</p>
            </blockquote>





	harry's favourite colour

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2012 [welcome home ficathion](http://kolms.livejournal.com/19212.html), un-betaed. JK Rowling owns everything!

Harry's favourite color was red. He decided this when he was three and saw a pot of poinsettias in someone's window. The flowers were jarring against the blue tint of evening and the white dusting of snow, but it was a happy red. He announced this to the Dursleys who promptly told him to pipe down.

When he was eight, he saw his Aunt Petunia accidentally cut her fingers whilst trying to spy on the neighbours through the window and attempting to chop peppers. The blood was red and he realised red wasn't always good. He thought that maybe he should pick a different favourite colour, but he still liked red so he edited it to be any red that wasn't blood.

When he was eleven, he met his best friend Ron Weasley. The Weasleys were ginger-haired and nicer than anyone else he had ever met, a family that seemed more welcoming than his own. Harry, Ron, and Hermione would sit in the Gryffindor common room, all decked in red and gold and _warmth_ , and Harry wondered if he could feel more at home.

When he was sixteen, he met his match and wondered if it was too late to change his favourite colour to a bright orange.

When he was seventeen, he lost his taste for the colour red. He had seen too much of it--crimson painted so garishly on the bodies of the dead that they looked like the most macabre of artwork. Red meant death and red meant pain, the grief he felt for those who had lost their lives in the war. He wanted to suffer for letting them lose their lives for him, wanted to bleed so they didn't have to.

When he was twenty-three, he held his wife in his arms. Ginny, who had stood by his side despite his insistence that he was too broken, too damaged to be loved by anyone. He wound his fingers through her hair, the dim light of the room catching. It wasn't red and it wasn't orange, it wasn't anything but _flame_. He decided then that it was his favourite colour--fire, he thought, the fire that rekindled his life.


End file.
